Surge testing is used to verify high-voltage withstanding capabilities of electronic components, and involves application of a high voltage pulse or a series of high voltage pulses to a device under test (DUT). Surge testing is typically done to meet industry specifications, for example, International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) specification 60747-5-2, Association of Electrical, Electronics, and Information Technologies (VDE) certificate DIN V VDE V 0884-10, etc., where the surge stress waveform shape and test conditions are defined by IEC 60065-1. Thus far, surge testing has been done to sort parts into passed or failed categories based on metrics provided from the surge generator equipment or tool. In one example, the surge generator provides a peak current or “Ipeak” measurement value defined as the highest current consumed by the DUT during the stress. Using this value, a threshold comparison was performed of the Ipeak value for a given DUT, and if the threshold was exceeded, the part was deemed to have failed the surge test. However, this Ipeak measurement value is not adequately stable or repeatable for process control in which there is no tolerance for false pass or false fail identifications, and thus tool specific characterization is required to determine applicable fail limits and correlation, if any, to the IEC or other specifications. Furthermore, different pulse generator manufacturers provide different output parameters, and a given test set up is specific to the pulse generator equipment. Consequently, even where the pulse generator tool is adequately characterized, false failures are common due to the fundamental lack of good repeatability and reliability of the Ipeak measurement or other tool-specific metric. Uncertainty in the tool-specific pass/fail metric requires use of ancillary verification equipment and process steps in order to determine whether a suspected part has indeed failed. For example, a part that yields an excessive Ipeak measurement in one test set up is subsequently taken off-line and subjected to an isolation resistance test using a different piece of equipment and/or the suspected part undergoes further parametric and functional automatic test equipment procedures. This lack of certainty therefore increases testing time and production costs, and largely renders the procedure unsuitable for testing 100% of the devices being produced. Moreover, replacement or upgrading to a different pulse generator tool requires recharacterization of the entire test procedure and system set up.